


The Lost Prince

by hollyanneg



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Costume Parties & Masquerades, I promise the gore and zombies are very mild!, M/M, Mild Gore, Sharing a Bed, Zombies, witchy Baz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29282022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollyanneg/pseuds/hollyanneg
Summary: Simon’s having a rough time: he’s just escaped from the tower where he was imprisoned only to be attacked by a group of zombie-like creatures. Looking for help, he stumbles upon Baz, a nobleman who moonlights as a fortune-teller and general forest witch. From there, they’re both sucked into a battle against the creatures and the hidden force who controls them.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	The Lost Prince

**Author's Note:**

> So I actually wrote this for the Carry On Big Bang last summer, but I never ended up posting it because my partner had to drop out. I've not written for this fandom in a long time. Still--hope you all enjoy it!

_PROLOGUE_

_He lived alone at the top of a tower. That didn’t mean he was completely isolated. He was vaguely aware that the tower was attached to something else. Davy always came to bring him food and books, to teach him and talk to him, and though he never saw anything else, that was enough for him. For a while._

_The windows in the tower had been carefully bricked up, all but the very top of them, so that all he could see was the sky. Sometimes he heard far-off voices, somewhere down below. He could never understand what they were saying. They sounded like ordinary conversations, and he wished he could join them._

_One day, the voices were closer. They were just outside the door—the only door in and out of the tower, the door that only Davy could open. (In his more rebellious moments, Simon had tried desperately to open it, but it had been magicked shut. That had become very clear.)_

_These voices weren’t like the ones he normally heard. They were frenzied and rough. They were coming closer._

_And then something—someone—came crashing through his unopenable door._

_They were people. He had seen people other than Davy, of course, because there had been a time before the tower, when he’d lived hidden but not so alone._

_But these weren’t like any people he had ever seen. Their eyes were crazed, feral. He couldn’t see any human intelligence in them. Their mouths and hands were bloody. They were reaching for him. And there were so many of them tumbling through the door._

_He didn’t have time to think. He grabbed his sword—because Davy had been teaching him to fight—and he held them off with it. He didn’t want to hurt them, whoever they were. Not really. He couldn’t tell if they wanted to hurt him or not, but the bloody teeth suggested that they did. He hacked at arms that reached too close, and eventually he managed to manoeuvre his way around them, getting in between them and the door. Then he ran._

_Now he discovered what the tower was attached to: a spiral staircase that seemed to go on forever. He could hear footsteps echoing behind him. He had to be faster than his wild-eyed pursuers._

_Eventually he came to another door. He burst through it and locked it behind him, though he doubted that would do much good._

_Past the door were hallways, so many of them, like a maze. He kept running, blindly. Down more stairs. Through more doors. Down those infinite hallways. Until, finally, he came to the last door, and, for the first time in years, found himself in the real world._

**BAZ**

Just because I didn’t grow up in Watford doesn’t mean I’ve never heard the legend of their lost prince.

It’s a story that echoed through every city-state in the Realms—that the king’s only son had been hidden away after his birth and was never seen by anyone except a few palace attendants who took care of him. The reason varied based on who was telling the story. He was horribly ugly. He was horribly ill. The King was paranoid that someone would kill his son. The King couldn’t bear to see his son after the Queen’s death in childbirth. And so on.

The first time I heard the story, from my Aunt Fiona, the reason was that the prince had magickal powers. The King didn’t want anyone to know, but the palace servants had told people anyway. “Servants will always gossip, you know,” said Fiona. It was a subtle warning not to tell anyone _my_ secret, either.

My secret is no longer a secret, but it doesn’t matter now. I’ve become two separate people: Basilton Grimm-Pitch, the wealthy peer who is on a long-term trip around the Realms, and Baz, the forest witch who sells poultices and tells people’s fortunes. I’ve cleaved these two parts of myself as a way out—of my stifling life, of my dusty manor—and as a way to use my powers, which I’m never allowed to use at home.

Normally, I never need to guess at anything. I’m clairvoyant. I can touch someone’s hand and see their past, present, and future. I can touch an object and know its significance to its owner. I can touch a book and know every word under its cover.

But I can’t tell anything about the young man who’s currently lying on my bed. I have a strange feeling that he might be the lost prince of Watford.

It’s _just_ a feeling, though, the kind that anyone might get. When I touched the man’s hand, I saw nothing but murky darkness. I’ve never experienced something like that before. I’m wondering if this man has powers of his own, something that means he can block me from reading him without even trying.

It _has_ to be without trying, because he’s been unconscious for several hours now. There was a knock on my door early in the evening—nothing unusual about that, since people want magickal problem-solving at all hours. What was unusual was opening the door to see an unreasonably handsome soldier (at least, I thought he was a soldier; he was holding a sword) on my doorstep, wide-eyed and clearly wounded, who gasped, “Help me, please!” and promptly collapsed.

I managed to drag the soldier over to the bed—the man was solidly-built deadweight, so that took a minute. I spent the next hour or so treating the man with the salves I normally sell. The bleeding stopped, and then I was able to get a look at the wounds themselves. They were strange, jagged, disconcerting to look at. Had the soldier been off fighting tigers or something?

Once I was reasonably certain that the man wasn’t going to die, I went back to the book I’d been reading before. But I couldn’t focus. I kept drifting over to the bed, checking up on the soldier and trying to read him.

-

By midnight, I’m frustrated. The lack of visibility is getting extremely tedious. Also, I want to go to sleep, and I put the soldier on my own bed assuming that the man would wake up at some point. I fix myself a pallet on the floor, grumbling the whole time.

I wake up to screaming. The soldier is sitting bolt upright on my bed, crying out and thrashing like he’s fighting the empty air. It takes me a moment to fully register what’s happening, and then I’m up, trying to help without getting hit. Trying to sound calm. “It’s fine. You’re safe. It’s fine.” I’m not great at being reassuring—I can’t keep the annoyance at being woken out of my voice. Still, the man starts to calm down.

“Who are you?” he asks in the quietest, hoarsest voice.

I let go of the no-longer-flailing arm I’m holding. “I’m the forest witch you came to for help. Don’t you remember?”

“A little.” The man’s face is hard to see in the dark, but he seems to be looking around, dazed.

“Who are _you_?” I ask.

“My name is Simon Snow,” he says, still quiet.

“And where do you come from, Simon Snow?”

“Nowhere,” he says.

“No one comes from nowhere,” I say, still annoyed. I go to get the man—Simon—something for his throat. “How are your wounds? Are they the reason for all that screaming?”

Simon Snow sounds embarrassed. “No—I had a nightmare. Hungry people, chasing me. It wasn’t real, but it has been.”

_What on earth does that mean?_ I wonder. I decide not to press further. He’s obviously not in his right mind. I bring back tea with honey and make him drink. When he’s done, I say, “Try to rest. In the morning, you’ll tell me why you came to me.”

I hope my tone leaves no room for argument. Simon doesn’t say anything else.

I wake in the morning half expecting to find him gone, or never having been there in the first place, but no, he’s still passed out on my bed. I eat breakfast, tidy up the mess from the night before, brew a vigour potion, and serve my first customer of the day.

My first customer is the solitary farmer who lives down the road and comes to me every Monday morning for the vigour potion. It’s meant to make him stronger, healthier, more attractive. He buys this because I refuse to sell what he originally asked for—a love potion. They don’t work, anyway.

When the farmer leaves, I come inside to see Simon Snow awake, blinking dazedly, looking like he’s already forgotten where he is again. I don’t ask. “You promised me answers,” I say to him. He didn’t actually promise anything. I hold up the remains of my breakfast. “I’ll let you have the rest of these eggs if you give them.”

A few minutes later, Simon’s sitting at my table stuffing his face with eggs like he hasn’t eaten in years. The first thing he’d told me was, “Until two days ago I lived in a tower and never saw anybody.” That was such a wild start to the story that I’d given him the eggs right away.

I sit down across him and fix him with my best unnerving stare, so he’ll tell me the rest. After he finally finishes the eggs and takes a breath, he says, “You’re going to think I’m mad.”

“I’ve heard plenty of strange tales,” I say.

Slowly, he says, “Maybe you’ll be able to explain this to me, then.” And he begins to tell me a story unlike any I’ve ever heard. People who seemed to be possessed by some malevolent force—something that made them senseless and bloodthirsty—had attacked the tower he lived in. Where he’d been a prisoner, clearly, though he didn’t say so. He had escaped them and discovered that his tower was attached to a much larger building. He didn’t know what the building was, but based on his description, it almost has to be the royal castle of Watford, where the king lives. I’ve seen it—I’ve been inside, once, ages ago, for a cotillion. His description perfectly matched what I remember.  
  


So, he escaped into the town of Watford itself and sought refuge at a tavern, until they kicked him out for drinking a beer he couldn’t pay for. “I didn’t have any money,” he says. “I didn’t know I needed to.” Which sounds odd until I remember he’s been completely isolated from the outside world.

After that, he says, he made his way out of town, towards the woods, which he thought would be safer. Here, I have to interrupt. “You thought the woods would be safer? The woods, which are full of bears and goblins and people like me? Really, Snow?”

He shoots me a dark look and says, “I’m not afraid of you. You tended my wounds.”

And I realize that I probably can’t intimidate him as much as I’d like. Because, yes, I helped him.

At the edge of town, before getting to the woods, he’d encountered another, different group of people who’d been possessed in the same way. They’d attacked him too. He’d run through the woods and managed to lose them, but not before they’d hurt him badly. He looked for help and stopped at the first house he found. Mine.

“So you didn’t even know I was magickal when you came here?” I ask.

“How would I?” he replies. Well, fair enough.

“Most people come to me for magic,” I say. “You’re in luck, because one of my gifts is healing. So you’ll live. But your wounds are like nothing I’ve seen before. They may take some time to heal.” I take the dirty plate to the sink and start to wash up.

Behind me, Snow says, “What’ll we do about the possessed people?”

_“I_ don’t intend to do anything about it,” I say, though it does make me uneasy. I’ve never heard of anything like it. “My advice to you is not to do anything until you’ve healed. And once you’ve healed, leave Watford. Don’t go back to whoever kept you captive.”

“I don’t have anyone else,” he says quietly.

I turn and frown at him. “I would think being alone would be better than imprisonment.” He shrugs. I roll my eyes and go back to washing.

He’s silent for a long time. I finish with the dishes and go to rearrange the potion bottles on my shelves, although I don’t need to. It’s something to do. Finally, he says, “I am staying here, then?”

“You may do what you like,” I say, sharper than I mean to. “But you can barely walk. I’m impressed you made it to the table. So yes, my recommendation is that you stay here.”

He looks ready to fight me even though he can’t stand without my help. “How do I know I can trust you?” he says.

I raise an eyebrow. “Me saving your life wasn’t enough proof?”

He backs down.

He goes back to bed, back to sleep. I serve a few more customers and take my usual afternoon walk. At dusk, he wakes, and I tell him, “In exchange for your dinner, you’ll tell me something else.”

“Is this how it’s always going to be? I trade food for information?” I can’t tell if he’s genuinely annoyed or not.

“For now,” I say, but I bring a plate over to the bed and hand it to him anyway. I keep the fork until he talks. “I’ve told you that I’m a healer,” I say. “I’m a seer as well. Are you magickal? If so, you might be of some help to me.”

He shrugs. This seems to be his preferred method of communication. “I can cast spells,” he says. “I can sometimes heal people, too. And I can conjure things.”

“Oh, if that’s all,” I say, amazed at the casual way he tells me. Hardly any one person can do so much. He also seems to have no shame about it. He shouldn’t—I firmly believe that magickal powers should be respected instead of reviled—but there are plenty of people, like my family, who see them as proof of some kind of taint. That wasn’t the only reason they forced me to hide it. They also feared that someone might use me for my abilities. I wonder if that’s the reason someone had Snow locked up.

So I say, “The person who kept you in the tower. Did they make you do those kinds of things for them?”

“He was magickal too,” he says. Still so casual. “He taught me how to use my powers. I’m not always good at controlling them.”

“Show me what you can do,” I say. “Conjure something.”

He’s still chewing, and he gives me a suspicious sideways glance. “What do you want? Money?”

“What? No.” I’ve plenty of that, but he doesn’t need to know it. “I run a business here,” I say. “People come to me for magickal items of all kinds, or to have their fortunes told. While you’re here, you can help me.”

“What if I don’t want to?” he asks.

I snatch the plate back—he was almost done, anyway—and say, “Then you’re quite welcome to go on your merry way.” We’ve already established that that’s not a possibility, given his condition.

“What would you want me to do, then?” He still sounds wary, and he snatches back the morsel of bread he hadn’t finished.

“I sell potions and things here, but they aren’t all magickal. The healing salves are, and a few others. I can’t conjure—” I’m loathe to admit it— “so I thought perhaps you could make some things for me to improve my non-magickal potions. And perhaps your healing talents could come in handy, too, if I ever encounter a particularly difficult case.”

“And you’d give me a share of the money you make?” he asks.

Money again. “I will allow you to live under my roof and eat my food until you’re well. Isn’t that enough payment?” I try not to sound too sharp, since I want him to say yes. But sweetness isn’t one of my powers.

He’s still looking rather defiant for an invalid, but he says, almost shyly, “Once I leave here, I’ll have nothing. If I stay for a while after I’m well, still helping you, could I have a share of the money then?”

“I suppose so.” I don’t need it—not all of it, anyway.

So he relents and shows me some of his skills. He conjures another piece of bread and eats it. “My conjuring’s somewhat limited,” he tells me. “I can’t make anything that’s alive, not even plants. And I can’t make anything too complicated. Davy always told me to try harder.” He sighs and doesn’t explain who Davy is. His captor?

“What’s too complicated?” I ask.

“Clocks, apparently,” he says. “That was something he asked me to conjure, and I couldn’t. I can’t do anything with a lot of different parts.”

Next, I ask him to cast a spell. “What kind?” he asks.

“I don’t know.” I haven’t known any casters. “Can you move something? Put my book back on the shelf?”

He mumbles something, and every book on the shelf comes flying off. I almost fall off my chair trying not to get hit.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He’s turned bright red. “I told you I can’t always control it.”

I don’t say so, but I’m impressed with that amount of power, even if he lacks control. “I think that’s enough for one night,” but I smile so he’ll know I’m not angry. Not even a little. Just so very badly impressed.

Before he falls asleep again, I tell him, “Once your wounds have healed a little, I get my bed back, and _you_ can sleep on the floor.”

He gives me the cheekiest grin.

-

He sleeps all day again, the next day. I can’t blame him. During the brief time he’s awake, I check his wounds, and they only look a little better than before. They’re still jagged and open and pink at the edges like they’re getting infected. I heap more salve on them and wonder if I’m going to have to brew something new and stronger to fight whatever this is. I change all his bandages and let him sleep.

The third day he’s with me is one of my market days. I go into town once or twice a week, either to sell things or to make house calls. “I’m going to be gone all day,” I tell him. “Eat what you want, and don’t go anywhere, for snakes’ sake.”

“You’re going to town? Can’t I go with you?” He looks so eager, it’s almost hard to say no.

But not quite. “You’re still weak. Stay here or I’ll pox you when I get back.”

-

I’ve just set up my stall in the marketplace when I start to hear the whispers. Two of the women who have stands near mine are talking about it. _The zombies_. The people with no humanity behind their eyes. The ones who’ve been attacking townspeople.

I don’t have any business yet, so I wander over to one of my neighbours. She isn’t gossiping with the others, but I know she’ll know.

“Bunce,” I say. “Well met by daylight.”

“Baz.” She gives me a curt nod and goes back to unpacking her wares.

“What’s this I’m hearing about attacks on the people of Watford? Should I be afraid?” I toss her my most insouciant grin so she’ll know I’m not.

She pauses in what she’s doing. “You’ve heard those rumours too?”

“Just now,” I lie.

She looks genuinely troubled. “A woman down the street from me was attacked the night before last. She’s got these awful, gaping wounds. I did what I could for her, but—”

Penelope Bunce sells salves and things too, and I know she fancies herself a bit of a doctor. She’s magickal too—we recognized that in each other when we met. She never says it out loud, though. Of course not. No one does. Except Simon Snow. And me, because I’ve given up on polite society.

I don’t tell her about Simon. I just ask her what she knows.

“It’s spreading,” she tells me. “Last week, there were only a few of them. Now there are scores. They’re roaming the streets in packs. Mostly at night.”

“How can it be spreading?” I ask.

“It’s some sort of disease,” she says. “It must be. The king’s been sending patrols around town—I suppose to guard against these creatures—but it isn’t doing any good. I haven’t actually seen the soldiers do anything but walk around and knock on people’s doors.”

“Knock on people’s doors?” I’m not surprised, but I’m still disgusted. “What, do they think ordinary citizens are going to be harbouring these—” I don’t know what to call them— “people?”

She shakes her head and gives me a dark look. “I don’t know what they think.”

I wander back to my own stall, more troubled than I’d care to admit.

**SIMON**

The days all blur together—they always have for me—but I think I’ve been with Baz for about a week. That’s all he gave me, Baz, no family name.

I’ve got the name Snow, but I don’t have any family, so I must’ve got it some other way. Ebb, who took care of me growing up, was a Petty. She wasn’t related to me. I must’ve asked her a thousand times to tell her about my parents. She always said she barely knew them.

Baz calls himself a witch, but I always thought witches were supposed to be evil, and Baz is just magickal, like me. Nothing evil about it, even if he is a bit of an arse.

I don’t care if he’s an arse. He’s helped me—saved my life, maybe—and he’s sort of funny. I like him. It doesn’t hurt that he’s the first friend I’ve had in years. I never really thought of Davy as a friend. I don’t know if Baz would call me a friend, either, or if I’m just some nuisance he has to deal with because he’s too kind to turn me out.

There’re only two problems with Baz (I don’t count being snarky as a problem). The first is that he keeps asking questions about my past, and I don’t know how to answer them. I don’t know why I was locked up, or where. I don’t know who knew about it besides Davy, who took care of me while I was there. I don’t want to talk about it, in any case. Better not to think about things that’ll only upset me.

(That’s why I don’t think about the prophecy either. Ebb’s friend, who was a seer like Baz, had held my hand once when I was a child and said, _you will meet with horrors and gore at hungry hands. Your fate will rest on bloodied teeth_. She frightened me so badly that Ebb made her leave. But I never forgot it. I just don’t think about it.)

The second problem with Baz, the one I’m currently fixated on, is that he won’t let me go anywhere. He’s says I’m not well enough yet. But my wounds are healing up thanks to a stronger healing potion he spent an entire night brewing for me. I’m walking around just fine. And I’m going a bit mad. I’m _finally_ out of the tower, only to be stuck somewhere else. Baz’s is better than the tower—and he lets me walk around his garden sometimes—but I want to see the world. I want to see everything.

I bother him about it so much one night while he’s trying to read that he finally gives up and says, “You’re an absolute nightmare. Fine, come to town with me tomorrow. I’ve got calls to make. Perhaps you can make yourself useful if I need assistance.”

I barely sleep that night. Too excited.

In the morning he frowns at my enthusiasm and says, “Rules. One, don’t wander off. Two, don’t get in my way when I’m working. Three, if you show any signs of fatigue or injury, I’m bringing you straight back here.”

I roll my eyes at him but don’t disagree.

Town is just like I remember it from the day I left the tower. Little narrow streets with cobblestones. Half-timbered houses with thatched roofs—they seem to huddle against each other, hunched and sagging.

But the streets are busy, full of people, and the air is thick with their chatter, and I don’t remember the last time I felt so alive. I can’t see or hear the ocean, but I know it’s nearby from the smell of salt in the air.

Baz walks with brisk purpose, and he knows exactly where he’s going, naturally. I’d hoped he would take me to the marketplace he mentioned, but no. “Today we’re just paying house calls,” he says.

The first is a very old woman who never leaves her bed. She has aching bones, and her daughter has asked Baz if he can do anything about it. If he can help her walk without pain again. He applies a different ointment than the ones he gave me. It seems to glow a little, and the woman’s skin turns golden when it touches her. “It’s warm!” she says. He rests her hands on those glowing spots, on her joints, and then asks if she can stand up. She does. She doesn’t get very far before she goes back to bed, but she’s pleased nonetheless. Baz promises he’ll come again.

As we walk to the next house, he tells me, “One of my usual customers has a daughter who wants me to look into her future. I don’t usually go to people’s houses for that—they can come to me—but the daughter is an invalid.”

She isn’t at all what I pictured when he said _invalid_. She’s young and lively and pretty, and you can hardly tell she’s ill, but she complains about how she can’t ever leave the house, and I say, honestly, “I know exactly how you feel.”

She flirts with Baz and me for the first few minutes. I get a little flustered about it, and he ignores it entirely. He just keeps asking her what she wants to know about her future. Eventually it becomes clear that she wants to know if she’ll be cured of her disease and when she’ll get married.

I haven’t seen a seer at work since I was a child—I don’t really remember—and it isn’t what I would’ve imagined. He doesn’t use a crystal ball or tarot cards, and he doesn’t mutter any incantations. He just takes her hand and concentrates. After a minute, his eyes flutter closed. He seems to fall into a bit of a trance. After about five minutes, he comes out of it.

The girl looks a bit bored with it all, and she’s obviously annoyed when he doesn’t tell her anything right away. He looks like he’s still a million miles away, despite having opened his eyes. Then he blinks a couple of times and comes back to himself.

“You’ll be married in two years’ time,” he says bluntly. “You’ll still be ill then, but not as badly as you are now.”

She pouts a little. “That isn’t exactly what I wanted to hear.”

“I can’t change the future,” says Baz sharply. “I can only see it. I have a warning, too—before your marriage, a man will come into your life who intends to do you harm.”

Suddenly she’s not so flip. “How can I protect myself from him?”

“He’ll ask you for your hand, but you must turn him down,” says Baz.

“Is that all?” She’s annoyed again. “What does he look like? Can’t I keep him from coming near me in the first place?”

“I didn’t see his face,” says Baz, and he seems to be thinking it all over. “I can give you a herb mixture to sprinkle around your house. That’ll keep some things out, but…” Then he turns to me, and I’m not expecting it. “Do you know any protection spells?”

It takes me a minute to react. “Um. Davy taught me one for protection in battle.”

He smiles at me, which is also unexpected. “I’m not sure that applies here.”

I keep thinking. “I know one that guards against bad luck.”

Baz says, “Could you teach it to her?”

The girl has been listening to all this, and she says, “Please!”

“Do you know when this man will appear?” I ask Baz.

“Within the next year,” he says. “I don’t know precisely.”

“Then you’ll need to say the spell regularly,” I tell the girl. “Every week until a year has passed.”

She says she will, so I teach it to her. Her mother pays Baz, and we leave. Outside their house, he hands me part of the money. “For your help,” he says.

I’m pleased. Pleased to be trusted and pleased to be paid.

We stop at a couple more houses—quick stops, Baz delivering potions and salves. Then he turns to me and says, “There’s someone you should meet, if you don’t mind paying one more visit.”

_“Mind?”_ I say. I never want this day to end. I don’t want to be confined anymore.

He just smirks at me.

On the way to this last stop, we pass a troop of men dressed all in green and brown. “One of the king’s patrols, no doubt,” Baz murmurs.

“What’re they patrolling for?” I ask.

“According to my acquaintance—the one we’re going to see— they’re patrolling for those creatures you encountered. The ones who injured you. But I’m not sure I believe it.” He glances back at the king’s men, sneering. “At least, I don’t think that’s all they’re doing. The King of Watford is always looking for excuses to root out anything he considers seditious. They go into people’s houses supposedly looking for the creatures, then they find banned books and pictures of the old queen and then—” He shrugs. “You know.”

“I don’t know,” I say. This is all news to me.

“Then they’re arrested,” he says. “He’s done this sort of thing for years.”

“The king?”

“Yes—you really don’t know?” He looks surprised. “You lived at the castle, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I never went out—I don’t know where I was.”

“Oh,” he says. “I forgot that was only a theory of mine.”

I’m interested to know he has theories about my life.

“Well, the King of Watford is always looking for ways to silence anyone who opposes him. It’s typical, really, for him to use this crisis in that way.”

“Why can’t people have pictures of the old queen?” I don’t even know who the old queen _was_.

Baz lowers his voice. “She died mysteriously. So did both of her children. All within a year of each other. The present king was a cousin—he was never expected to inherit the throne. So people say he had them all killed. I wouldn’t give any credence to the theory except that he has suppressed any memorials to the old dynasty, even though they’re his own family.” Baz stops walking and looks me over carefully. “Of course, it’s all just hearsay. It might not be true.”

I ponder on that a bit as we walk. I wonder why no one has risen up against the king if they really think he’s a murderer. And I wonder what any of it has to do with the creatures.

Our last stop is at a funny, crooked house at the end of an alley. It looks about to slide off its foundation. But it looks cosy, and it’s painted emerald green, and I’m altogether taken with it. Baz rings a bell, and a girl about our age answers. “Baz!” she says and practically drags him inside. “Tell me you brought my onions.”

He holds up the stinky bag he’s been carrying all day. “Would I be here if I hadn’t? I don’t fancy being cursed. Bunce, this is my new apprentice, Simon Snow. Simon, Penelope Bunce. She’s one of us.”

I reckon Baz means she’s magickal. She shoots him a look like he’s given away a secret, but she asks us to stay for tea.

Once we’re all sitting in her little parlour, I ask why Baz brought her onions.

He gives her a cool look and says, “She makes a powerful healing stew with them, don’t you, Bunce?”

She glares at him again, then she sighs and says, “If you’re really Baz’s apprentice, then I suppose there’s no harm in telling you.”

I’m not, but I don’t say so. It’s close enough.

“I cook a lot of medicinal foods and sell them at market. Baz grows magickal produce, as I’m sure you know—”

I didn’t.

“—so I buy things from him for my cooking.”

Once we’ve finished her rather bitter tea, she shows me around her kitchen, explaining all the things she makes. The stew cures colds. She’s got biscuits that reduce headaches and wine that increases fertility and jam that soothes bee stings. She notices that I’m still bruised from my run-in with the creatures and hands me a bowl of greens that she says will help. I promise her I’ll eat it as soon as I get home.

We leave soon after that, but she tells me to visit again.

As we walk back to Baz’s, I can’t stop smiling. I have a second friend.

-

It’s later that same night, and I’m scarfing down my supper, when Baz, who’s been watching me with one eyebrow raised, says, “Did no one ever teach you any table manners, Snow?”

I’ve got sauce on my chin, I can feel it. Is that why he’s asking? “What does it matter?” I ask. “There’s no one here but us.”

“Does it not occur to you that I might not want to see every bite that you chew?”

I clamp my mouth shut and remember my first impression of Baz—haughty, imperious, snobby. He’d saved my life, so I hadn’t been in any place to judge him. Now…

Well, now he’s still letting me stay with him and eat his food. Maybe I’m obligated to like him.

But right this minute I’m glaring at him. “I suppose you went to some kind of fancy school where they taught you those kinds of things?”

His expression turns suspicious, and he doesn’t answer me.

After we’ve eaten, I sit back down at the table to read. Baz has at least a hundred books and doesn’t seem to mind me looking at them. He watches me for a minute then says, “So you have no table etiquette, but you can read. What else did your captors teach you? Clearly nothing about how to accurately use your magic.”

“Why should I tell you anything?” I ask.

He doesn’t say, _because I saved your life._ He says, “What could I possibly do with that information? Do you think I’m going to run off and tell everyone I know? I’m curious, that’s all.”

“You told me Penny’s secret,” I point out.

“It’s hardly a secret,” he says. “She doesn’t have to say it out loud—magicians recognize their own kind. Well, except for you, I suppose. You didn’t recognize that I was magickal.”

I hate that he says this like it’s a failing. “I was a bit preoccupied with having nearly died,” I say. “But why is magic supposed to be secret, anyway? Why can’t you just say it?”

“How inconsistent of you, Snow,” he says, looking down his long nose at me. He’s been pacing around the room while we talk. “You accuse me of betraying Penny’s secret, then ask why it was a secret at all?”

“I’ve been locked in a tower half my life,” I remind him. “I don’t know how anything works outside of it.”

I see a flash of pity on his face before he goes back to disdain. I don’t want to be pitied.

He sighs and says, “There’s no good reason why it’s kept a secret. There’s simply a social stigma attached to magic. Oh, people will gladly go to a magician for potions and things, but they don’t want one in their family. There’s an idea that the parents must’ve committed some evil to give their child powers, or that they’ve been cursed with having a magickal child. It doesn’t make any sense—magic is genetic.” He stops, and he looks like he’s somewhere else entirely. When he comes back to earth, he says, “This is why I don’t live with my family anymore. I was tired of being made to feel shameful.”

I wonder who his family is. Where they are. I’d give anything to have a family—I can’t imagine ever wanting to leave them if I did have one.

That’s the end of the conversation. I go back to reading, and Baz brews potions for the next day’s work.

Some days are busier for him than others. He seems to go to town twice a week, more or less, and on the other days, he’s open for business. The most people come on Saturdays and Mondays. “They want to end their week with vice, then start the new one with virtue,” he says to me one day. He’s just had two people in a row ask for “calming” potions—he tells me this means something to make them less amorous. “And then there are those who come for the exact opposite.”

He says he won’t sell anything that allows humans to manipulate each other. No love or compulsion or memory-wiping potions. I’m learning that Baz may be prickly, but he lives by a particular code of honour. I suppose that’s the reason he helps people like me. There are plenty who come to him for healing, too, and he’s surprisingly gentle with them. From those who can’t afford to pay, he accepts baskets of fruit or jars of honey or, once, a goat that he promptly gave away to a farmer he knows.

We spend long hours alone on the less busy days, and I coax him into talking to me. He tells me a little more about his family and his travels around the different realms. I like listening to his stories, and I feel the strangest stirrings in my chest and in my stomach, like nothing I’ve ever felt before.

But then he’ll mock my cooking or refuse to take me to town, and our squabbling starts all over again.

**BAZ**

Simon’s been with me about two weeks when suddenly one of his healing wounds begins oozing a strange green pus. It’s absolutely disgusting, though I don’t tell him that. More concerning—I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I just heap more of the same salve on it and rebandage it.

He’s absolutely incensed when I tell him an hour later that he can’t go into town with me. “It doesn’t even hurt!” he cries. “You’ve bandaged it! What harm can taking a walk do?”

“We don’t know, which is exactly why you need to stay here.” I’m packing my bags for market, and he plunks down in a chair and watches me sullenly. I watch him out of the corner of my eye. What is his obsession with going to town? His annoyance is causing a smoky smell in my house, so I finally relent a bit and say, “If it doesn’t get any worse, I’ll take you the next time I go. But not today.” I leave before he can argue with me anymore.

I go to market, sell everything I’ve brought, make one house call, and head back towards the forest by mid-afternoon. I’ve reached the edge of town when a sign on a tavern door catches my eyes. In tall, dark capitals, I see the name SIMON SNOW.

I rip the sign off the door. It has a rough sketch of a man who does indeed look a bit like the person I left at my house. It says: _WANTED, by order of King David. Aged about 18, 1.8 metres tall, dark blond hair, blue eyes. Last seen at Watford Castle on the 22 nd day of September. Come to the sheriff’s office with any information. Reward for capture: £1000._

I tear down the poster and tuck it in my bag, and I make a silent pledge to myself not to lead anyone to him. I’ll feign ignorance. I’ve always been a good liar.

But maybe he is too, and if I’m harbouring a fugitive, I need to know. I don’t care—anyone who strikes out against the tyrannical King of Watford is all right in my book—but I’d rather not be arrested.

I’m also a bit puzzled, since he seemed to genuinely not know anything about the king, and really seems incapable of committing any serious crime.

Simon’s sitting in my front garden when I came home, slumped over, head held in his hands, looking glum and bored. I pause and wonder at that. He isn’t fully healed, but he can walk. I can’t exactly force him to stay home. There’s nothing stopping him from leaving the premises when I’m gone, except perhaps some feeling of obligation towards me.

He notices me watching and sits up. “Baz, my leg is _fine_.” The words burst out of him like they’d been queued up. “Look!” He lifts his bandage. It still looks disgusting, but no worse than before.

“I told you to keep that bandage fastened,” I say.

He ignores that. “Did you bring food? There’s hardly anything here. I ate turnips for lunch—Baz, d’you know how bad turnips are when you’ve nothing to put with them?”

“I’ve been remiss in my duties, Snow,” I say. Not serious at all. Because, again, nothing’s stopping him from wandering to the pub just outside the forest or literally anywhere else for food. “A host ought to provide something better than turnips to his guest.” I come into the garden and sling my bag at him, but not before I snatch the paper back out of it.

The bag’s filled with things I bought at the market, including fresh meat and bread, and Simon looks like he’s in heaven. He looks at me like I’m the god of this particular heaven, because I’ve brought him food. I don’t smile about it until I’ve gone inside and he can’t see.

He follows me in and says, “I’ll cook up this chicken for supper, then.”

“What do you know about cooking, Snow?” I ask. So far he hasn’t seemed to have much skill in that department. I suppose whoever held him captive didn’t teach him to cook.

That’s who’s looking for him, I’m sure of it. I decide to get this out of the way immediately. He’s standing by my table, rooting through my bag. I have to say his name a few times and cough loudly before I can drag his attention away from the food. I’ve unfolded the sign with his face on it. I hold it up to him and say, “Do you know anything about this?”

He comes over and snatches it from me, frowning at it, reading the text. He looks up at me, confused. “What is this?”

“I thought you could tell me,” I said. “They’re hanging up in town.”

“I haven’t committed any crimes,” he says, his mouth hanging open the way it often does.

When did I start noticing what he _often does?_ Am I really learning his mannerisms?

“Is there anyone who might be looking for you?” I ask. “Family, or—” _Or your captor?_ I think.

“Davy,” he says.

“Who’s that, then?”

He doesn’t answer, just clenches his jaw and stares at the paper.

“Simon,” I say. “I’m not about to hand you over to any bonety hunters, all right? I’ll even try to protect you from whomever this is—” Am I really promising that? Merlin. Well, all right. I’m fonder of this moron than I care to admit. “—If you’ll just tell me who they are. I still know nothing about where you came from.”

“Watford Castle,” he says.

“Yes, I thought so.”

“I didn’t know—” He’s still staring at his own face, not at me. “I thought as I was escaping, ‘this building is huge,’ but I didn’t know it was the castle.”

“I thought it might be when you described it to me,” I say. I sit down at the table, and he follows suit, sighing deeply.

“Davy’s the one who looked after me—he was the one who imprisoned me too, but he said it was the right thing—I don’t remember much from when he first took me there.”

“What _do_ you remember?” I try to sound gentle, but that’s not really my forte.

He finally tells me.

“When I was little, I lived with Ebb, somewhere far from here. In a forest. It was like this one but not.”

“How so?”

“It was deeper and darker—so many dangerous things lurking. Ebb never let me go very far on my own. But we were happy enough. We kept goats.” He smiles at some memory, then turns sombre. “She took care of me, but then she died. I came home one day, and she was just lying on the floor with blood on her mouth.” He shudders. “I don’t know what happened, and I didn’t know what to do, but the next day, Davy showed up out of nowhere. He said he was a friend of Ebb’s—he showed me letters from her, and most of them were about me—and he said he’d promised her he’d take care of me if anything happened to her. He said somebody had killed her and that person was going to hurt me too—”

When Simon doesn’t continue, I venture a guess. “He locked you in the castle for your own protection?”

He nods. “That’s what he said, yeah. I asked a million times if I could come out. He said someday, but it was never the right time.” He starts to whisper. “I don’t know what happened to him. If the creatures got him. I’ve been wondering if they’re what he was protecting me from all that time.”

I wouldn’t normally ask—I’d just _say_ it—but it’s Simon’s life we’re talking about here. “May I share my theory?” He nods, so I continue. “Those creatures aren’t why he locked you up. They’re brand new, I’m certain of it. I’m not from this realm. I’ve travelled extensively, and I’ve never seen or heard of anything like them. I suspect your Davy was hiding your power—it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen, either. I suspect he was preparing you for some great destiny—” or sacrifice— “but those creatures got in the way of his plan. And may I say, I don’t think there’s any good reason for him to have imprisoned you like that.”

Simon doesn’t thank me for that, just says, “I’m worried about him, but I don’t want to be a prisoner again. I don’t think I can go back.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” I say. “Especially not when someone’s apparently looking for you.”

“Do you think I’m ‘wanted’ because I killed some of those creatures?” he asks. He looks almost sorry to have done it.

“I think any sane person would thank you for that. I imagine it’s your Davy who’s looking for you. He wants his magickal secret weapon back.”

“I’m not a weapon!” Simon says, with one of his defiant, chin-raised looks.

_“I_ don’t think you are, but some people might.”

We sit there in silence for a while, and as I’m turning the whole thing around in my head when something occurs to me. It’s so obvious that I feel idiotic for not having made the connection sooner. “Snow,” I say, “you were imprisoned at Watford Castle, and the King of Watford’s name is _David._ ”

“You think Davy was the king?” He looks incredulous, then amused.

I suddenly remember what I thought about Simon the first time I saw him. He’d looked like some kind of storybook hero with his bronze curls and blue eyes and valiant sword, so naturally I’d thought of the local real-life fairy tale. The Lost Prince of Watford. I’d dismissed the idea that Simon could be him after that first night. He hadn’t seemed polished enough to be a prince. But a prince who’d grown up with a goatherd in a forest, followed by many years alone in a tower—well, _that_ prince might turn out very much like Simon.

And who would King Davy want to hide more than his own missing son? That had always been the prevailing theory, anyway. That the prince was still alive, just in hiding.

He’s still looking at me, waiting for a reply. “Yes,” I say. “I definitely think Davy is the king. And I don’t think any of this is a coincidence.”

“Any of what?”

“The king and those creatures and your escape. I think they’re all connected, even beyond the obvious.”

“What’s the obvious?”

I want to say, _keep up, Snow!_ Instead I lean in closer and say, “The king lives at the castle where you were imprisoned. The creatures allowed you to escape. But why were they in the castle? And why were you kept hidden? There’s more to it.”

Snow smiles at me. I’m not expecting it. It’s sunnier and more mischievous than I would’ve expected during a conversation like this. It catches me off guard, and I smile back.

“You’ve got it all figured out, have you?” he asks. His tone of voice matches his smile.

“I have some ideas,” I say. “But I won’t know if I’m right until we know more about those creatures. And I need someone with an in at the castle—” As soon as I’ve said it, I know who we need. Penelope Bunce’s brother is one of the king’s guards, and the king trusts them above all. The Bunce brother won’t tell us a thing, but Penny would. There’s nothing she loves more than a problem to be solved, and besides, she owes me for all the magickal onions I’ve sold her at half-price. “Snow,” I say, “let’s pay another visit to Penny Bunce.”

“Oh, so you really are letting me go to town?” He’s an absolute shit about it for the rest of the day.

-

His leg looks a little better the next day, so we pay our call to Penny. I don’t have a mask for Simon to wear in town, but I do have a potion that’ll cause anyone who looks at him to immediately forget his face. That will have to do.

Penny isn’t expecting us and doesn’t look terribly pleased to see me, but she’s already taken a shine to Simon, so she plunks him down in a comfy chair and starts feeding him scones as soon as we come in. To me, she says, “Basil, you’re supposed to announce your visits so that I can put away anything I don’t want you to see.”

Simon spits crumbs out of his mouth. “Your name is Basil?” He grins.

“Worse,” says Penny. “It’s Basilton.”

Simon laughs.

I didn’t tell her my true identity—I don’t tell anyone—but one of her powers is divination, so she figured it out on her own. “I’m not here to spy on your tarot readings, Bunce,” I say with as much disdain as I can muster. It isn’t much when Simon’s laughing like that. He’s lovely when he laughs.

I push that thought away, and Penny says, “What _are_ you here for, then?”

I can’t really be prideful under the circumstances, so I go for honesty instead. “I need your help. There’s more onions in it for you, and anything else you want that I can produce.”

She lifts her eyebrows. It’s a look that says _the mighty Baz Pitch has come to_ me _for help?_ I roll my eyes at her.

She sits down and gestures me to a chair too. She starts pouring tea for all of us. Bunce’s tea tastes like swill. I’ll be drinking slowly. “What do you need help with?” she asks.

I show her the wanted poster of Simon. Since she already adores him, her reaction isn’t: _get this criminal out of my house!_ It’s: “This surely can’t be right!”

“I don’t know what I’m wanted for,” says Simon, mouth still full.

“Tell her everything you told me,” I say. He glares at me. Doesn’t like taking orders, I suppose. “It’s necessary,” I say.

So he tells her. The goatherd, the tower, Davy, the creatures, his escape. I tell her my theory about Davy’s identity, but not the one about Simon’s.

I say, “We want to know what those creatures are and where they come from. We want to know what they have to do with Simon’s captivity and this wanted sign. I thought between your divination skills and your brother’s position with the King, you’d be able to help.”

Penny looks thoughtful. She dunks a biscuit into her tea. “My brother doesn’t tell me anything, but he might be able to get me an invitation to the castle if we needed it.”

She’s in, just like that. I resist smiling. It’s probably her fondness for Simon that convinced her. Then again, isn’t that why I’m here, too? I’m not letting anyone lock him back in that tower.

-

Bunce promises to visit us from now on, so Simon doesn’t have to risk coming into town, and he pouts about it a little.

She keeps her word and comes the next day, carrying several heavy-looking bags. She shuffles into my little house, looking like she’s about to fall over, so I take a bag from her. I peek inside and immediately drop it.

“There is a _human head_ in this bag, Bunce!”

“I know,” she says, unperturbed.

Simon’s sitting on my bed, looking a little green, and I’m glad I’m not the only one.

“There was another attack on my street,” she says, setting down her other things. “The butcher shop at the end of the lane. Fortunately the butcher had an axe or something and—” She shrugs.

“And he cut off its head?” I ask.

“Indeed. Apparently they’re very difficult to kill, but I suppose you can kill anything by cutting its head off.”

“And why did you feel the need to bring a severed zombie head into my house?”

“To try to find out more about these things. It’ll help me look into the aether—a physical object always helps. But I also thought you might have some way of testing it to see what kind of creatures they really are. What they’re made of.”

I turn that thought over in my head for a minute, looking around at my various potions. I do have one called _essence_ that’s meant to unmask anyone or anything—to force them to show their true form. I’ve never tested it on anything more than a squirrel, which proved its essence by staying exactly the same. Nonetheless, I pull the potion off the shelf and explain it to Bunce.

“Perfect,” she says. So we anoint the gruesome head in her bag with a few drops of it, and we watch as it changes. The horrible, sharp teeth go dull, the yellowy eyes turn white, and the leathery skin softens. In the end, it simply looks more human.

The three of us exchange glances. “They’re people,” says Simon. “They don’t act like it, but—”

“People who’ve been altered in some way,” says Penelope.

“By another magician,” I say. “Someone like us, but with nefarious purposes.”

“You think?” she asks.

“Who could do this besides a powerful magician?”

She nods at that. “All right. I’m going to see what I can find out.” She starts unpacking another one of her bags, setting a metal bowl, a jar of water, and a long needle on my table. “These are for scrying,” she says. I nod—I’ve seen other people do it. She hands me the needle and says, “If I’m gone for too long, prick me. It’ll bring me back.” She pours the water into the bowl, then leans over it, placing one palm flat on the table and the other on top of the zombie’s greasy hair. Simon and I shudder as one. Then we watch as Penelope’s eyes slowly go blank. Until she’s very clearly no longer in the room with us.

Simon whispers, “I don’t like this, Baz. We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“I understand, but what else can we do, Snow?” I ask. “Just let these creatures and whoever made them keep wreaking havoc?”

“It’s not your responsibility, or Penny’s. If it’s something to do with me—” he hesitates, then says, “maybe I should go away. I don’t want to bring danger to your door.”

I’m touched that he’s worried for me, but there’s no need. I tell him, “My house is magickally protected. I bought it from another magician who’d put up powerful wards.” Then before I can think about it, I add, “Don’t go.”

He looks at me like he’s searching for deeper meaning behind my words. I turn away.

Penny’s gone for ten minutes, then twenty. The occasional finger twitch is the only thing proving she’s still alive. After five more minutes, Simon says, “How long is too long?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve never seen someone scry this long.”

He doesn’t hesitate. He grabs the needle and stabs Penny with it. She gasps and comes out of her trance, just like that. After a moment, she says, “How long has it been?” Her voice is hoarse and terrifying.

“Nearly half an hour,” says Simon, anxious.

“You were right to do that, then,” she says.

I’m already moving around my kitchen, brewing tea (which will taste much better than hers). Once it’s done, I put a little something in it to soothe her throat. Just for good measure, I slap a bandage on the spot where Simon stabbed her.

Once she’s had a bit of her tea, she says, “This didn’t clarify things as much as I’d hoped, but I did see the King.”

“You did?” Simon and I say at once.

She nods. “He was in a room full of beds, and in each bed, someone was sleeping.”

“Do you know what the King looks like?” Simon asks. “You’re sure it was him?”

“I’ve seen him in parades and such,” says Penelope.

“What _does_ he look like?” Simon asks.

She shrugs. “Unremarkable. Medium height, brown hair, a little moustache. He always wears green.”

Simon slumps in his seat and doesn’t speak again. I’ve a feeling that means I was right.

“Who were the people in the beds?” I ask her.

“I don’t know—no one I’ve ever seen before. I’m sure they were somewhere in the castle, but I don’t know where.”

“We need to get in there,” I say. “Bunce, do you really think your brother could get us an invitation?”

“All three of us?” She looks dubious.

“Well, you and I.” Simon makes a sound of protest, and I tell him, “Do you really want to go back to where you were held hostage? Do you really think that’s safe?”

“You can just give me some more of that memory-wipe potion,” he says.

“It only works for half an hour at a time,” I say. “Remember, I made you drink it multiple times?”

“So we’ll do that again,” he says.

“It isn’t safe!”

Penelope shushes us. “No use in arguing about it until I know if it’s even possible. I’ll send you a message when I know.” She gathers up her things and leaves, promising again that she’ll try to find out something soon.

When she’s gone, Simon is glowering at me. I swear his anger is making the room hotter. I can smell the smoke. “You can’t leave me out of this,” he says. “It directly relates to me. Even if the only connection is that the creatures allowed me to escape.”

I borrow one of my father’s haughty tones. “I’m only thinking of your best interests,” I say.

He growls at me.

“Use your words, Snow,” I say. “You’re not an animal.”

He doesn’t. He just sits at the table with his fists and jaw clenched.

“Fine,” I say. Suddenly I’m just as angry as he is. “Be childish about it. I’m going for a walk.”

It isn’t hot or smoky outside, which confirms that that was somehow Snow’s doing. He has so much power and no idea how to use it.

I walk halfway to town before I’ve cooled down enough to turn around. By the time I get back to my house, I’m not angry anymore, but I don’t fancy facing Snow if he’s still in a strop.

He’s in the kitchen when I come in, and he’s cooking something, but he doesn’t turn around or say hello, so I don’t speak either. I sit on my bed and pretend to read for fifteen minutes or so. Then Simon’s standing in front of me, still angry but holding out a bowl of some kind of stew. He meets my eyes. He looks fierce and angry. I try not to sound like I’m giving up any ground when I say, “Thank you, Snow.”

He nods and walks away. I eat sitting on my bed. I don’t feel like sitting at the table with him.

He takes the bowl back from me wordlessly when I’ve finished, and he goes to the sink to start washing up. In a minute, my house begins to fill with bubbles. The sink hasn’t overflowed. He’s manifesting them somehow. “Snow…” I say.

He turns around and sees. They’re everywhere, floating prettily, catching the late-evening light. Snow sighs. “I didn’t mean to.” Then, after a moment, “Things just happen when I’m upset.”

“So I see,” I say. “Snow, I’m not trying to control you. I just—”

“You’re protecting me,” he says unhappily.

And then I realize that protection hasn’t been a good thing for him. _Protection_ means spending years alone in a tower.

Still, I don’t feel like apologizing for caring about what happens to him. “I can’t stop you from going if you want to,” I say. “That’s true in general, actually. If you wanted to leave here…” _Please don’t_ , I think.

“I’ve nowhere to go,” he says.

Which isn’t really what I wanted to hear. I was hoping for something more along the lines of, _I could never leave you, Baz._

What is he doing to me?

“I’ll go to the castle with you,” he says, and that’s the end of it.

-

**SIMON**

Baz is wary of me for a few days. We aren’t fighting anymore, but we’re keeping our distance. Baz is my first friend in—well, really, ever. I don’t want him angry at me. I don’t know if he is. How could I know, when I have no experience with friendship? Is it normal to ask someone if they’re angry?

It’s strange to me to think that I ever didn’t trust him, when we’re fighting because he wants to keep me safe.

We’re waiting for an answer from Penny, and it doesn’t come right away. That makes the silence between us worse, somehow, because there’s this restless anticipation in the air. We’re both fidgety and uncomfortable. We both spend more time outside—as long as the other isn’t there—and Baz keeps his nose buried in books when we’re inside and there aren’t any customers.

When I lived in the tower, Davy let me keep a calendar. That was the only way I could mark time passing. The only way I knew how old I was: 18, by the time I left.

There’s no calendar at Baz’s, and it’s driving me a bit batty. But I know the year is growing older. It’s colder now. It was September when I left the tower. Is it October now? November? How long have I been with Baz? Everything before is starting to feel like a bad dream.

As the nights get colder, the blanket Baz gave me isn’t warm enough anymore. I can’t sleep for shivering.

One night, out of the darkness, I hear his voice, sleepy and sardonic. “Snow, your teeth are chattering.”

“Ssssorry,” I say.

“Are you cold?”

_Obviously_ , I think. But this is the most he’s said to me all day, and I want him to keep talking to me. “I am, a little,” I say. I wonder if he has some potion that would make me warmer.

He’s silent for a minute, and I think that’s the end of it, but then he says, “You can come up here if you want.”

My voice comes out squeaky. “In the bed?”

“Yes,” he says.

I stand up quickly, before he can change his mind.

“Bring that blanket with you,” he says, so I drag it up onto the bed. He’s pressed back against the wall, leaving just enough space for me.

I lie down with my back to him and pull my blanket over both of us. “This all right?” I whisper. He hums, which I suppose means yes.

This is a hundred times warmer. It could get _too_ warm. I keep hoping he’ll put an arm around me, but he doesn’t. Instead I fall asleep with my back pressed to his chest, his breath warm on my ear.

-

The letter from Penny comes the next day.

_Dear Baz and Simon,_

_It took a little while to convince my brother to help us. He kept asking why I wanted to come to the castle so badly. I didn’t know what to say, but finally I told him that my friend Basilton Grimm-Pitch comes from the minor nobility and wanted to be introduced to King David._

Baz howls when he reads that. I can’t tell if he’s angry or amused—he’s laughing so hard that he’s about to cry. Finally he says, “Oh, she’s blown my whole cover, Snow. But my name will certainly get us in. _Minor_ nobility indeed!”

“What do you mean?” I ask him.

“I come from Hampford,” he says—the neighbouring realm. “My family are quite prominent there.”

“You’re of noble blood?” I ask, surprised.

He nods and doesn’t give me any more information. The name _Basilton Grimm-Pitch_ keeps repeating itself in my head.

The rest of Penny’s letter says:

_Once I told him that, he said he’d see what he could do. Apparently there’s a ball coming up, in honour of the King’s birthday, so Premal got invitations to it for me, Baz, and one guest. It’s a masquerade, so we can disguise Simon appropriately._

_The ball is next Saturday; I’ll come to see you before that._

_Best,_

_P.B._

-

Baz is still hardly speaking to me, despite the fact that I practically spent the night in his arms. But he goes around for the rest of the day laughing at random about Penny’s note, and after a while he admits to me that all of this is going too slowly for his tastes. He’s been to town without me twice this week—he refused to take me again, which just made our fighting worse. He learned there that the attacks are becoming more frequent, and the number of creatures keeps growing. “At this rate, half the realm will be dead before we can do anything about it,” he says.

But going to the castle is our only plan. Neither of us are keen on the idea of being killed.

-

I sleep in Baz’s bed every night leading up to the ball.

I wasn’t sure if he was going to let me do it again, but the second night he pressed himself up against the wall again, clearly leaving space for me. We don’t talk about it. We just know, when darkness falls and we both start yawning, that we’ll be going to bed together.

Nothing ever happens—I’m not even sure what I’m hoping for. Maybe for him to tell me that he cares about me. It feels like I’ve been here forever, but I know it’s really been a short time, and if Baz is the most important person in my life, it’s only because I have no one else.

But that doesn’t make it less true.

That doesn’t invalidate all that he’s done for me, or all the things I feel when we’re pressed up against each other and his arm sneaks around my waist (which started happening on the third night).

He holds me so tight, and I think to myself, _I’d probably die for you_. Every day I promise myself that I won’t let any harm come to him, no matter what happens with these creatures.

-

Penny comes to see us the day before the ball, and she can clearly feel the tension between us. She looks between the two of us suspiciously but doesn’t say a word about it. Instead, she explains that she’ll rent a coach for us and come to fetch us just after supper the next night. She reminds us that we’ll need to be appropriately dressed for court. Baz sneers at that. “Yes, you know ever so much more about that than I do, Bunce.” I think he’s still annoyed that she revealed his identity. I’ve decided that I don’t care who his family is. He’s just Baz to me.

She ignores him. “Masks, too,” she says. “Don’t forget the masks. And something to hide Simon’s hair.”

“What for?” I ask. I don’t want to have to wear some stupid hat or wig all night.

“Because it’s easily identifiable,” she says. “It’s so bright. There will be people there who know you. The king, for one. But I imagine some of his operatives would recognize you, too.”

Baz snorts and murmurs, _“Operatives.”_

Penny shoots him a look. “Obviously there must be people besides him who know about his plans. And knew that he was hiding a boy in the castle for years.” Turning back to me, she says, “So you’ll have to be properly disguised, Simon.”

I reluctantly agree.

After she leaves, Baz turns to me and looks me over. “I think I have something you can wear. But as for masks and head coverings… Do you think you could conjure something?”

Baz knows by now how wonky my magic can be. “I can try,” I say dubiously. So he shows me what he plans for us to wear. He’s got fancy clothes hidden in the back of his wardrobe, clearly left over from the life he lived before all this, and I realize as he pulls them out that I have no idea why he left all that behind. There are silk breeches and cravats and long coats for each of us, mine in grey, his in dark green. There are fine white shirts to go underneath. I touch them gently, like they’ll fall apart. I’ve never worn anything this nice.

Baz is watching me carefully. “Do you think you can make something to match them?”

I bite my lip and tilt my head to get a better look at them. “I’ll do my best.” I sit down so I can focus, and I recite the incantation that Davy taught me. _Always say these words before you conjure,_ he’d say. _They will focus you. Then picture what you want in your mind’s eye._

There’s a crashing sound behind me, but I keep my eyes closed and think about what I want. When I open my eyes, all the clothes have flown out of Baz’s wardrobe and are strewn on the floor. The wardrobe itself is also on the floor. But on the table in front of me are two masks and a ridiculous hat with a plume. One mask is black, the other white, and they’re both edged in the same dark green as Baz’s costume. “I didn’t mean to make them match each other,” I say, a bit embarrassed, but Baz picks up the black one and examines it.

“They’re perfect,” he says. He holds it up in front of his face, and it obscures the upper half completely. Only his grey eyes are recognizable.

-

The next night, Penny pulls up in front of Baz’s little house in a nice coach, drawn by four horses, manned by a driver who looks like he’s dressed for the ball himself. Baz takes one look at it and laughs. “You said you’d let a carriage,” he says to Penny as we climb in. “Not conjure one.”

“It’s not conjured,” she says. “It’s transfigured.”

“What was it before?”

“A pumpkin…”

Baz laughs again. He’s in high spirits tonight, not quiet and withdrawn anymore. He’s smiling at me, and I hope desperately that he won’t stop.

We drive through town, and I see parts of it that I’ve never seen before, but then something rises up in front of us that’s very familiar. It’s a sprawling stone building flanked by towers, and it sits imposingly on a hill above the town. It’s my former prison—I wouldn’t necessarily recognize it except that I get a cold, uncomfortable feeling when I see it.

Penny’s magicked coach drops us just outside the tall, heavy main doors, where people are streaming inside, then it disappears to who knows where. It responds to whatever she wants, I guess. Baz whispers to me that the horses and driver have been magicked, too. He’s close to me as we walk inside, so close that our hands are brushing, and I wish I could just reach out and grab his.

We come into a long hallway lined with banners and tapestries. I’ve never seen this part of the castle. I guess I’ve never seen most of it. We follow the mass of people down this hall and into an enormous, high-ceilinged room. The walls are rough stone, but the floor is polished wood, and there are already dozens of couples dancing.

There are pages at the door dressed in the royal colours of Watford—I only know the colours because I’ve seen them around town. The pages are stopping each set of people who come in, asking to see invitations, and then announcing everyone’s names. I look at Baz and Penny, panicking a bit. “We can’t let them announce my name,” I whisper.

“Fortunately, your name isn’t on the invitation,” Baz says. “We’ll pretend you’re my cousin.”

So a moment later, the page is announcing us to the room as Penelope Bunce, Basilton Grimm-Pitch, and Dev Grimm.

We’ve only just positioned ourselves in a corner and started whispering about our plans when another man in royal livery approaches and said that the King has asked to meet us. Baz turns and says to me, “Don’t move from this spot.” Fortunately this page doesn’t seem to care that I’m not following him. So Baz and Penny disappear, and I’m on my own, wondering if I’m going to see the King, wondering if it’s really Davy, wondering if he’s somehow already figured out that I’m here…

**BAZ**

We’ve only been at the ball for about five minutes when I come face-to-face with the man who imprisoned Simon. That’s all I can think as I look at him. I’ve never seen him before, but I’ve heard so much about him, the draconian laws he’s implemented since coming to power and the rumours about what may have happened to his predecessors, the ridiculous elflike costumes he wears and the way he promotes himself as a champion for the poor and downtrodden. I can feel myself glaring at him instead of the playing the part of a gracious courtier.

The page introduces us, and King David greets Penny. “Your brother does good work for me,” he says. Then he turns to me. “Mr. Grimm-Pitch, your family’s reputation is well-known even here.”

I force a smile. “I’m pleased to hear it.”

He looks me up and down. “I’m afraid their methods of governance differ somewhat from mine. Is your father still lord of Southern Hampford?”

“He is,” I say, “and I’m sure he’d be fascinated to hear your opinions on how he ought to govern it.”

Penny and the King both glare at me for that. The King says to me, “You arrived with a cousin, did you not? Have you lost him already?”

“A pretty young lady turned his head,” I say. But _Davy_ is looking at me like he knows exactly who my “cousin” is and what we’re planning. _We need to get this done quickly and get out of here_ , I think.

He dismisses us, and we make our way back to Simon, but he isn’t where we left him. We’re both panicking until we spot him in the crowd. Apparently my lie to the King wasn’t a lie after all. Simon is dancing with a beautiful girl with long, blonde hair. I’m madly jealous, but I try to pass it off as anger when he re-joins us a minute later. “We told you to wait here,” I snap. “That doesn’t mean ‘go off and dance with the first pretty girl you see.’”

“She wasn’t the first pretty girl I saw,” says Simon. “I’m sorry, Baz, did you want to claim my first dance?” He’s smiling, and his eyes are bright, and I’m tempted to say yes.

_Yes, I did want to dance with you. Yes, I did want to know what it’s like to have you in my arms when we’re both wide awake_.

But I don’t say anything. Next to me, Penny’s getting impatient with us. “None of us have time for dancing!” she says. “We need to slip out of here and explore the castle. We’ve got to find the room with the beds from my vision.”

“Actually, the girl I was dancing with might be able to help,” says Simon. “She lives here in the castle. She might know that room.”

“We can’t _tell_ her,” says Penny, and I’m relieved that we’re in agreement about that.

“Well, no,” says Simon, “but we could ask her for a tour at least. She said she’d find me again in a minute.”

Of course she did. Simon is gorgeous, and charming when he wants to be. And if she had any idea she was dancing with the Lost Prince of Watford, she’d only be that much more interested. I cross my arms, lean against the wall, and try not to look too grumpy.

It’s less than five minutes before Simon’s dance partner finds us. She’s about to drag him off into another waltz, but he stops her and introduces Penny and me. Suddenly the girl is giving _me_ an interested once-over. _Don’t waste your time_ , I think.

She says her name is Agatha, and when Simon expresses an interest in seeing the rest of the castle, she’s happy to oblige. So she shows us the throne room, where the king receives petitions from his subjects. She shows us the grand dining hall, where he occasionally hosts dinner parties (“not as often as I’d like,” she says). She shows us a wing of private living spaces, including the one she shares with her parents. She points out stairs leading down to the kitchens and up to one of the towers (is it Simon’s tower, I wonder?). Then she stops abruptly and says, “That’s probably all I’m allowed to show you. Other areas aren’t open to guests.”

Penny has her arm in mine—I’m not sure when that happened—and Agatha is giving us an _oh it’s like that_ kind of look. Penelope says to her, “I remember my mother telling me once that there are medical wards in the castle. For people who can’t afford treatment elsewhere.”

This is a bold-faced lie, and I’m enormously proud of Bunce.

“Do those still exist?” Penny asks.

“I’ve never heard of anything like that,” says Agatha. “My father is a doctor, so he tends to anyone in the castle who’s ill or injured. He has a little office in the east wing.”

“How interesting,” says Penny. “Is your father magickal?”

Agatha looks distinctly uncomfortable. People don’t just ask that. But she whispers, “Yes, but don’t tell anyone. The King prefers that no one know there are magickal people living here.”

“More than one?” Penny asks.

Agatha fidgets a little. “I probably shouldn’t say…”

“We won’t tell anyone, will we, Baz? Simon?”

Simon and I agree that we won’t.

So Agatha leans in close to us and whispers, “Some of the men in the King’s Guard are magickal. I guess the king finds their powers useful. Sometimes I’ve thought that he might be magickal too—the king, I mean—but I’m not sure.”

Well, Simon said that Davy was magickal.

Agatha leads us back towards the ballroom, and at one point she’s asking me questions about Hampford—I’m not sure when she even learned where I’m from—and Penny pulls Simon aside and whispers something in his ear. Then we’re back in the entrance hall, and Simon is walking into the ballroom with Agatha, and Penny is holding me back. “I asked him to distract her for a while so that you and I can explore on our own,” she says.

I’m still pathetically jealous—I don’t want to leave Simon alone with Agatha. I don’t want him to _distract_ her. But there’s more at stake here than my hopeless feelings. So I follow Penelope, and I say, “Medical wards? What was that about?”

“That’s what the room in my vision looked like. Like a hospital. Do you think Agatha’s father’s office could be a ward like that?”

“It’s a place to start,” I say.

But the castle is huge and disorienting, and it takes us a little while to even find the east wing. Then we walk down one hall after another, opening doors at random, looking for anything resembling a hospital or doctor’s office. Instead we mostly find bedrooms and studies, until we’ve very nearly reached the end of the wing, where we find a little office with medical charts and equipment in it, but nothing interesting or suspicious.

We keep going, into what I think is the south wing of the castle. This seems to be servants’ quarters. The rooms we peek into are smaller and plainer. Then we come to a hallway with only one door on each side. One of them opens into a long gallery with tall windows.

The other is locked. It’s the only locked door we’ve encountered so far. We exchange looks, and Penny says, “Have you ever picked a lock?”

“No…”

“Me neither.” But she pulls a pin out of the elaborate hairdo she’s wearing tonight and tries to jimmy the lock with it. We hear a clicking sound, but still, nothing happens when I turn the knob.

We’ve been lucky thus far not to run into any guards, but suddenly there are footsteps, and two men dressed in the King’s livery are coming around the corner. They’re holding swords. Before I know what’s happening, Penny grabs me and kisses me. I splutter and try to get away, until I realize that the guards are laughing. So I kiss her back. It’s not the worst experience ever. But it’s my first kiss, and I wish it were with someone else.

The guards pass right by us, leaving us alone. Penny lets go of me, and I say, “Good quick thinking, Bunce.”

She laughs at me and says, “Took you a minute to catch up.” Then she hands me the hairpin. “You give it a try.”

I don’t do anything differently than she did—just stick the pin in the lock and jiggle it around—but miraculously, when we try the door again, it opens. And as soon as we look inside, I know we’re in the room from Penny’s vision. It’s a long gallery like the one across the hall, but the windows are covered with thick, black drapes. There are two rows of beds, six on each side, and in each, there’s an ashy-faced person, fast asleep. It’s hard to see them in the dim candlelight, but they look all wrong. They look like they could be in the process of transforming into the creatures who’ve been terrorising the town.

There’s a desk and bookshelf at the end of the room. Penny’s already there, holding up a candle to read the book spines. “They’re alchemical books,” she tells me.

I look in the desk drawers and find a bundle of papers loosely tied with string. They’re filled with incomprehensible scribbles and mathematical equations. Penny looks over those, too, and she says, “Baz, I recognize some of these terms from healing books I’ve read. Whoever wrote this is trying to find a way to become immortal. They’re trying to brew some kind of potion—like an antidote for any disease. What’s the word for that?”

“Panacea?”

“Yes, that.”

I look at the papers in Penny’s hands, then I look at the beds. A dozen people, silent, unconscious, looking like they’re at death’s door. “They’re an experiment,” I say. “Whoever’s doing this—” and I have my suspicions— “is administering experimental potions to these people.”

“And that’s why they’re turning into—” She doesn’t have a word for those creatures. Neither do I.

“I think so,” I say.

Her voice is hushed and serious. “I never thought all this had a human cause…”

“I could be wrong.”

“No, I don’t think you are.”

There are footsteps in the hall again—fortunately we closed the door behind us—but we exchange glances, and Penny says, “We’d better go.” She stuffs the papers into the bodice of her ballgown.

“Is it safe to take those?” I ask. “Someone will notice they’re gone.”

“Who could trace that back to us?” she asks. “Besides, without these, we have nothing. With them, we might be able to stop whatever this is.”

I don’t argue with her further. Once we’re sure it’s safe, we step back into the hallway and try to make our way back to the ballroom. It takes a little while to find it. Penny says, “As soon as we find Simon, let’s go. Just in case anyone does notice the papers are missing and starts questioning people about it.”

But Simon is lost in the crowd again, no doubt dancing with _Agatha_. I can’t stand this—and it’s so ridiculous when everything else ought to be so much more important. I try to spot them amongst all the other dancers. I look for Agatha’s long, pale hair or Simon’s ridiculous hat. But then there’s a soft touch at my shoulder, and I turn around, and there he is, smiling at me. _Alone_. “I’m claiming that dance now,” he says.

“Simon, we have to go,” says Penny.

He doesn’t take his eyes off me. “Just one dance, Pen… Please just let me have this.”

I’m not sure if that _please_ is for her or me, but when he takes my hand and leads me away, I don’t stop him. Of course I don’t. We’re swept into the mass of people, and Simon doesn’t let go of my hand. He keeps a tight hold of it and puts his free hand on my shoulder, so I let mine rest on his waist. He’s smiling up at me, and his white mask makes his eyes look bluer.

_This could be a dream_ , I think. This whole thing—the entire past month of my life. (Has it been a month? Or longer? How long has Simon been with me?)

I dreamt it all up because I was bored and lonely. There isn’t any conspiracy, there aren’t any creatures, and there definitely isn’t any blue-eyed boy who sleeps in my bed and dances with me.

There is, there is.

He’s too close to me for this to be a dream. He’s too warm and vibrant and alive. Even if I accomplish nothing else, I’m going to make sure he stays that way. _I won’t let anything hurt you, Simon Snow._

Simon’s humming along to the song the orchestra is playing, like he’s heard it before. He keeps smiling at me. He’s a clumsy dancer, stepping on my toes, but I don’t care. I can’t stop smiling either. I can hear the song winding to a close, and I feel a rush of disappointment. I don’t want this moment to end. So I take a leap—a small one, but it feels huge—and say, “Do you think Bunce would allow us one more dance?”

Simon beams. “Best not risk it,” he says, and my disappointment mounts until he adds, “I’ll dance with you at home, if you want.”

_Home._ I don’t even have a response for that. His smile becomes a smirk, like he knows he’s rendered me speechless. He drags me back over to Penelope.

We all walk back towards the entrance hall, but there near the doorway is King David, speaking to a couple of noblemen but looking for all the world like he’s been waiting for us. And sure enough, as soon as we’re close enough, he turns and says, “Miss Bunce, Mr. Grimm-Pitch, leaving so soon?”

Penny is quick. “Unfortunately we’ve only engaged our driver’s services until midnight.”

I can feel Simon move behind me and shrink down. The king’s eyes are on him anyway.

“We had a lovely time,” she says, and then we all move as one, bolting out the door. I’m certain we’re going to be followed, then relieved when we aren’t. We find our coach in the long line waiting outside, and then we’re off, hearts pounding. “Made it,” says Penny.

“Did you find the room?” Simon asks, so we take turns explaining what we found. Then he admits that King David is indeed the Davy who kept him in the tower. “Once I saw him, I was sure. But I never thought he was a bad person—”

I want to scream. _He locked you in a tower!_

“Surely it isn’t him doing this,” Simon concludes.

Surely it is. It’s not hard to believe that the same man who would kill to take the throne would crave immortality and sacrifice others to achieve it. And maybe Simon was a part of the plot, originally. Maybe he had planned to use Simon’s powers to help him.

Penelope and I look at each other. She’s thinking the same thing I am.

I’m also certain that Davy was suspicious of the third member of our party. I realize with a sinking feeling that the King’s men may be showing up on my doorstep very soon. Most people still don’t know that Baz the forest witch is also Basilton Grimm-Pitch, but that doesn’t mean the king, with all his resources, won’t be able to find out.

It occurs to me that maybe I should send Simon away, for his own safety, but I don’t know if I’ll be selfless enough to do that.

-

Bunce stays the night with us. “I think it’s safer if none of us are in town right now,” she says. “We’ll start deciphering those papers first thing in the morning.”

I’m frustrated not to be alone with Simon after that dance, but apparently he feels the same way, because after we’ve all cleaned up and changed out of our court clothes, he pulls me outside for a moment. We hover in front of my door, and he’s quiet until I say, “What is it?”

He takes my hand and says, “We’ve hardly talked for the past week, until tonight.”

“I know,” I say.

“I’m sorry we fought. I know you were only trying to help me.” I can’t see his face very well in the dark, but I know him well enough now to read what I _can_ see. He’s wide-eyed and earnest.

I take a deep breath. “And I know that you’ve been controlled by other people for too long. You want your freedom. I’m sorry too.”

He squeezes my hand. “Just please don’t go away again,” he says softly.

“Go away? I didn’t—”

“I mean, please don’t stop talking to me.” And then, abruptly, he says, “I liked dancing with you, Baz, but it wasn’t what I wanted. Or, I mean, it wasn’t all I wanted. I wanted this, too.”

He leans up and kisses me.

It’s cold outside, but Simon’s mouth is hot, and my knees turn shaky. I put my arms around his neck so I won’t fall, and he grabs me around the waist. I might’ve expected Simon to be a shy kisser, but he isn’t at all. He’s confident and pushes for more, and I give it to him. I let him closer and deeper. I’d give him anything.

Two kisses in one night! I’m glad the second one was with him.

When he pulls away, he doesn’t let go of me. He lifts his eyes to mine and says, “Did you want me to do that?”

I’m speechless, for once, so I just nod.

“Good—I wanted to do that. I’ve been wanting to all week. Maybe longer.” I see him grin in the dark. “Will you let me sleep in your bed, with Penny here?”

“Nothing could stop me,” I say, feeling as confident as Simon. “Least of all Bunce.”

So we go inside and curl up in my bed together, the way we have every night for more than a week, and Penelope watches us but doesn’t say a word, just smiles. I hold Simon tighter than I’ve let myself on all those other nights, and he presses closer to me than he has before, sighing happily when I kiss the back of his neck.

I sleep long and hard.

-

He’s not in my bed when I wake up. I’m facing the wall—I’ve moved in my sleep—but I can hear Simon and Penelope murmuring to each other behind me. I roll over, and Simon looks at me and grins. “You slept through breakfast,” he says.

“Baz, good, you’re awake,” says Penny. “I was just about to start trying to decipher those papers.”

The three of us sit down at my table, and I nibble on Simon’s leftover bacon. Penny spreads the papers out in front of us, and when Simon sees them, he gasps.

I turn to him, and he’s gone ghostly white. His eyes are wide, and he looks at me and says, “Baz, it _is_ him.”

How could he know from a single glance? “Davy?” I confirm. “The king?”

Simon reaches out and touches one of the papers, one with a long list of chemical formulas. “It’s his handwriting,” he says. “He used to give me lessons when I lived in the tower. Literature and mathematics and—” he pauses— “chemistry… He’d write out exercises for me, or he’d write comments on my work.”

He looks horrified, and I think he’s naïve for not realizing sooner that his mentor—his captor—might not be a perfect person, but I feel for him anyway. I take his hand. “I’m sorry,” I say.

Bunce doesn’t seem to realize what a painful moment this is for Simon. She says excitedly, “Then you can help us get to the bottom of it!” She rushes on— “It all makes sense, really, doesn’t it? He killed to take the throne in the first place, and now he plans to stay in power forever. Maybe he even killed his son—”

I glance at Simon.

“—the only person who could replace him. Maybe that’s what really happened to the lost prince!”

“Maybe,” I say noncommittally. I’m still convinced that the lost prince is sitting beside me.

The person in question sighs and takes a few of the papers to read. Penny and I do the same. I agree with Bunce—the chemical formulas are essentially a recipe for a potion. Some of the other papers seem to contain notes made from books the king studied. I see the names Nicolas Flamel, Sir Galahad, and the Comte de Saint Germain—people who supposedly achieved immortality.

Penny is the first to speak. “These are some of the spells he must have used while creating the potion… But it clearly hasn’t worked. Those creatures may be immortal if they’re left to their own devices, but they aren’t lucid or human anymore. The King isn’t trying to turn himself into _that.”_

“Surely not,” I agree.

“So why is he still trying? Why would he keep using his potion on people if it’s a failure? People in town are saying there are at least a hundred of those creatures now. They’ve congregated along the waterfront—they’ve got a little colony of sorts down there.”

“That’s horrifying,” I say. I hadn’t heard that.

She says, “He may be mad, and he may be merciless, but why sacrifice a hundred people—not to mention those we saw in the castle—for a failed experiment?”

“You said once that it’s a disease,” I say. “Diseases spread.”

“You think--?”

“I’m not sure, but it’s possible that those creatures are infecting other people. Imagine there’s a potion in their bloodstreams that acts like venom, and imagine they bite someone—”

“Like vampires,” she says, wide-eyed.

“Exactly.”

Simon has been silent this whole time. He’s still sitting and staring at the papers with that same, stricken look on his face.

I turn to him— “Did those creatures bite you? When they attacked?” If they did, then my theory is wrong, because he hasn’t turned, and it’s been weeks.

He shakes his head slowly, and his voice sounds like it’s coming from miles away. “They scratched me—their nails are long, like knives—”

Penny nods. “I’ve seen them.”

He doesn’t speak again for nearly an hour, until after Penny says she needs to leave. She gathers up the papers to take home with her, promising to write to us if she discovers anything more. I take her by both shoulders and say, “For snakes’ sake, Bunce, don’t do anything stupid. Don’t put yourself in harm’s way.”

She rolls her eyes at me fondly. “I won’t,” she says.

It’s only when she’s gone that Simon looks up at me, eyes bleak, and says, “Baz, I’ve got to go.”

I take a deep breath. I don’t want him to leave. I’ll convince him—I’ll protect him. “Simon, if you’re worried for my safety, don’t be. I have wards up, remember? We’re both powerful. We’ll be all right.”

“It isn’t that.” He’s staring down at the table again, and he sounds miserable. “I’ve got to go back to the castle.”

“Why on earth would you do that?” It was stupid for us to take him to the ball. It’d be stupider still for him to go back alone.

“I’ve got to face Davy. I’ve got to stop him, and if I can’t—if he won’t listen to reason—then I have to fight those creatures.”

“Alone?” I say. “That’s mad. Why should it be your responsibility, anyway? There’s three of us working on this problem, and there’s an entire town fighting off those creatures.”

Quietly, he says, “It’s my responsibility because I’m his creature, too.”

I wonder if he knows—I wonder if he’s always known—that the King is his father. Or does he mean it some other way? Because Davy raised him?

But he’s comparing himself to monsters.

“You’re nothing like them,” I say vehemently. It comes out a little fiercer than I mean for it to. I’m not angry with him. But I’m also not going to let him go. He looks up at me like he can read all my thoughts. The idea is mortifying, because I’m thinking about how much it would hurt to lose him, especially now, especially when I thought that maybe he felt the same way about me as I do about him.

I don’t want him to know that I’m weak, so I say, as firmly as possible, “You can’t go, Snow. We’ll find another way.”

He lifts his chin defiantly, and he’s never looked more like a prince. “You can’t stop me.” He gets up from the table and stomps into my kitchen, taking our dirty plates with him. As he walks away, he mumbles, “You called me Simon before.”

-

Just like that, we’re back to not speaking. If I’d hoped to spend the day distracting myself with kisses, I’m badly disappointed. He sits as far away from me as he can without leaving the house, and he spends all afternoon reading one of my books, ignoring me, so I do the same. I’m not going to apologize—I don’t believe that I’m in the wrong.

He doesn’t say a word until I’ve cooked supper and handed him a full plate. He says “Thanks,” and goes back to reading.

I go to bed early, still tired from our late night-adventures at the ball and not wanting to deal with his stony silence anymore. But I leave space for him, just in case he wants to come to bed with me anyway.

I can’t sleep, but I pretend to for a while, and eventually I hear the sounds of Simon getting ready for bed. He comes over and lies down with me just like always. I resist the urge to put my arm around him. I don’t want him to know I’m awake. I don’t want to scare him off.

I wait until his breath evens out before I let myself hold on to him, let myself brush a hand through his hair and whisper, “Simon Snow, I just want to keep you safe.”

He’s not asleep—he was pretending too. He shifts in my arms and whispers back, “I know, Baz. I’m not angry anymore.” He squeezes my hand. “I’m going to keep you safe, too.”

“I’m not worried,” I say. And I’m not—for myself.

-

I wake up alone in bed for the second morning in a row, but this time there aren’t any reassuring voices. When I sit up and look around, the house is empty. My heart starts to pound. Sometimes Simon goes for a walk in the morning. I’m telling myself that’s all it is until I look to the corner where his sword stays. It’s gone. He hasn’t touched it since he’s been living with me, and now it’s gone.

He’s gone to the castle.

I fight the urge to follow him right away. I need to get dressed, I need to eat, and then I need to think about this logically. Going to the castle alone is a dangerous idea.

I’ve nearly finished eating—and nearly convinced myself to go to Penelope before I do anything else—when I hear a commotion outside. It sounds like a mass of footsteps and voices, and my first thought is that Simon has recruited townspeople to help us fight. And then I’m so convinced of it that I run over and throw my door open.

\--Only to be met with the sight of at least a dozen of the zombie creatures advancing on me. The first one is through the door before I have the chance to close it. They’ve broken through my wards, which are supposed to protect me from anything that would do me harm. I grab my fire iron, the only plausible weapon in my house, and wish, as I have many times, that I could cast spells. They’ve got me cornered. I fight a few off with my makeshift sword, but then one of them has me around the waist, holding me still while another bites my neck.

I think, _this is Davy’s revenge for me hiding Simon from him._

Then the world goes black.

**SIMON**

For as much as I worried about Davy, in the castle with those creatures, I never thought I would voluntarily go back. He always said he was doing what was best for me, but once I was free, I thought another day of imprisonment would drive me mad.

I retrace my steps from the day I escaped. I pass the pub I was thrown out of; I see the street where Penny lives. And then there’s the castle, on its high cliffs above the town and the sea. The climb takes a lot longer than the descent, and a lot longer than riding up the hill in a carriage with Penny and Baz.

_Baz._ I’m trying not to think about him. I’m trying not to worry about leaving him alone. If I survive this, I’ll go back to him. I hope he won’t hate me for leaving.

It takes me the better part of an hour to climb up to the castle, and then I’m standing in front of the same grand doors I walked through the night of the ball. They’re closed up tight now. I won’t be able to get in this way. I walk around the perimeter of the castle, looking for other doors or maybe an open window. I don’t have much luck, and then, after a few minutes, I hear footsteps behind me.

I hide myself in a little alcove, hoping whoever it is hasn’t actually seen me. I’m near the edge of one of the cliffs. I look down and see waves crashing against the rocks, and I smell the saltwater. I take a deep breath, trying to prepare myself for whatever comes next—death or re-imprisonment or…

The footsteps are getting closer. They’re coming around the corner where I’m hiding.

And then I’m face-to-face with Davy.

He actually looks relieved to see me. “Simon,” he says, and he takes me by both shoulders like he’s done many times before. I flinch. “I hoped you’d come back. This situation has become completely unstable. I need your help.”

I haven’t come to help him. Really the opposite. I step away from his grasp and say, “Why didn’t you tell me you’re the King of Watford?”

He sighs and looks away. He’s done that a million times before, too. It means he’s annoyed with me. “We can discuss that later. Come on—”

“No,” I say, taking another step back and lifting my sword.

His expression changes—now he’s confused. “Simon, what are you doing?”

“I know everything.” (Not true, but I can pretend.) “You made those creatures.”

“Simon, put that away.” He means the sword. “You’ve got it all wrong. The creatures are a failed experiment—”

That’s exactly what Penny said.

“—and I need your help to get rid of them.”

In the end, this is the person who took care of me for 10 years, and he’s asking for my help. I put down my sword and follow him.

He takes me into the castle, which is now completely deserted. I wonder if he’s sent everyone away—the courtiers and the servants and maybe even his guards. We walk down hall after hall—I never knew the castle was so huge and confusing.

Finally he takes me into a long gallery, and it has to be the room from Penny’s vision. There are 12 beds lined up, and in each one, someone is sleeping. They all look ill.

“They’re very close to waking,” he tells me. “When they do, they’ll be like the other creatures. They’ll cause more destruction. The first thing to do is to kill them. Then we’ll go down to the shore and deal with the others. I’ve created a counter-potion…”

I stop listening. He’s just reminded me why I’m here. He’s the mastermind of all this. He’s ruined all these people’s lives in his selfish quest. And he probably won’t give up—he’ll keep trying to become immortal.

I’m not plunging my sword through these sleeping people’s hearts, or whatever it is he wants me to do. I’m about to interrupt him to say something along that line, but then we both hear a commotion in the hall.

He moves to bar the door. “They’re back—there’s a faction of them that keeps coming back to the castle. I don’t know why. If we can keep them out of here, they’ll leave after a while.”

But he hasn’t yet secured the door when the first one comes crashing through. In a flash, Davy has his wand out, and he’s hurling spells at them.

There’s maybe half a dozen of them, and one comes for me right away. I don’t know any spells for this. It’s reaching out for me, and I see the long fingernails, like the ones that ripped me open. Its mouth is open, and I can see blood, like it’s just come from killing someone else.

And suddenly I’m a child again, standing and staring up at Ebb and her terrifying friend. _You will meet with horrors and gore at hungry hands. Your fate will rest on bloodied teeth_.

This is that moment. It must be. The moment I’ve waited for and feared all my life.

_This creature is going to kill you_ , I tell myself. That’s how I convince myself to drive my sword through its chest.

But that isn’t my destiny. My fate isn’t to kill these creatures. It’s to stop Davy.

He’s taken down three of them with his spells, and I manage to take care of the next one that comes for me. Davy and I both turn on the last one at the same time. His spell strikes at the same time as my sword, and the creature falls immediately.

He turns to me. He’s sweaty and his face is flushed, but he’s smiling. “We make quite the team, don’t we? I always knew we would.”

That’s when I realize that he _likes_ this. Battles. Destruction. Power.

“Davy,” I say firmly. “I’m not here to fight those creatures with you. I’m here to stop you. I know you’re trying to live forever, but that’s not meant for us. I’m not going to let you experiment on anyone or anything else.”

Once again, he’s looking at me like I’m a silly child. “I told you, I’m done with this particular experiment. I’m going to regroup. I won’t do anything else right away.” He comes close and takes me by the shoulders again. “Simon, it’s time I explained to you your role in all this. You’re right—you aren’t just here to fight. You’re my heir.”

It takes me a minute to catch up. Does he mean heir to the _throne_?

He sees my confusion and laughs. “That’s right. If I don’t live forever, it’s you who’ll be the next king of Watford. Didn’t you wonder what I’d been grooming you for all these years?”

_Grooming_ me? No, I didn’t wonder. “Why?” I ask.

He pushes my hair back off my forehead and smiles down at me almost tenderly. “Because you’re my son. You’re the famous Lost Prince of Watford.”

I’m reeling for a moment. I had fantasized sometimes about him being my father. Why else would he have taken such an interest in me even before I lived with him? But eventually I had decided that he couldn’t be. Surely he would’ve told me sooner if I were…

Apparently not. I remember Penny mentioning the lost prince, but I don’t know anything about him. Except that he’s me.

Maybe I shouldn’t fight my own father, I think.

“I had to keep you safe here,” he says. “Your power is beyond all measure—I made you that way.”

“What?” I don’t understand.

“Before you were born, I performed spells. I wanted you to be the most powerful magician the realms had ever seen. And you may well be. I made you nearly impenetrable by any other force.” He looks so pleased with himself, it’s a little frightening. “I couldn’t unleash you onto the world until you were ready.”

I don’t like the idea of being _unleashed_.

He concludes, “My plan isn’t for you to inherit. I plan to make us both immortal. We’ll rule Watford together. Until the end of time.”

There’s a crazed light in his eyes, and I remind myself that no matter what else, he’s a madman, and I have to stop him from doing any more harm. “I’m not killing these people,” I say. “They’re just sleeping. They haven’t done anything wrong.”

He sighs, exasperated, and gives me that _stupid-child_ look again. “But they will, as soon as they wake.” He waits, and when I don’t say anything, he says, “I’ll do it myself then.”

He takes a vial out of his pocket, and it looks like poison, and I say, “What is that? What are you going to do?”

“I’ve designed it to waft through the air. It’ll kill them instantly. They won’t feel pain. But you’d best step outside. I’ve taken an antidote for it, but you haven’t.”

I’m not letting him do this. I knock the vial out of his hands. It breaks on the floor, and a green gas begins to seep out of it. Davy grabs me and shoves me into the hall, then slams the door behind me.

I’ve just made a stupid mistake. I killed them after all. I played right into his hands. And then he saved me…

I was stupid to think I could take him on by myself. If he wants to kill all his creatures, fine. There’s probably no saving the ones who’ve already turned. But he’s not going to rule Watford forever. Not if I have anything to do with it.

So I run. I find my way out of the castle as fast as I can. I hurtle down the cliffs and back into town. I run through the streets pell-mell, ignoring all the stares and shouts that follow me. I go straight to Penny’s house.

She answers her door right away, and I tumble inside, practically falling over myself to tell her what’s happened.

“Wait, wait, slow down,” she says. “Tell me again?”

I sum it up as quickly as possible. “Davy’s killing all the creatures. He’s going to keep trying to become immortal so he can rule forever. And I’m the Lost Prince.”

She gapes for a moment, then says, “We need to get Baz. Three is a powerful number. We can stop him.”

She throws a few things in a bag. “Poison mushrooms and sleeping tonics,” she says. “I don’t know if they’ll help, but it’s something.”

We leave her house and run for the forest. It feels like it takes forever to get out of town. After a few minutes, frustrated, I mumble, “ **Hurry up, hurry up**.” And suddenly we’re flying. Fortunately I’ve got Penny by the hand, so she doesn’t fall. She looks at me in shock and yells over the wind, “What did you do?”

“I don’t know!” I shout back. But however I did it, it gets us out of town a lot faster. Soon we can see the forest ahead of us, and then we’re flying over the trees, and I spot the little clearing where Baz’s house is.

We land roughly. We’re both going to be bruised. For a moment, I’m happy at the thought of seeing him again so soon. Maybe he won’t be angry with me, since I’ve only been gone half a day.

But then I notice something’s wrong. The garden is trampled, and the front door is hanging open—actually _hanging_ off its hinges. Penny and I exchange a look, then get up and run for the house.

Baz is on the floor, motionless. I hear Penny’s gasp and my own wail of pain, but they sound like they’re coming from far away. He’s covered in the same kind of gaping wounds I had. And much worse—there’s a bite mark on his neck.

Penny sees it right away, too. She rushes to Baz’s shelves and starts pulling things off them. Salves, poultices. She comes and kneels beside him with an armful of them. She starts applying them, all over his body, while I mutter every healing spell I can think of, anything Davy ever taught me.

After maybe half an hour of this, we’ve both run out of ideas, and he isn’t any better, except that we’ve stopped the bleeding. He’s still lying on the floor, unconscious, barely breathing, and he looks horribly ashen, like the people sleeping in the castle. I can feel tears welling up. He’s going to become like them—a monster. I can’t save him. The thought is unbearable.

Penny seems to be thinking the same. “I think every magician in Watford has tried to stop this infection—they’re risking exposure to do so. And none of it has helped. He’s a powerful magician, maybe more powerful than any of the rest of us.”

She means Davy. I brush away my tears before they can fall, and I push myself up off the floor. I’m about to run right off to fight him, but Penny takes me by the hand and says, “Simon, let’s eat something. I bet you haven’t eaten all day.”

It seems like a strange time to pause and eat, but she’s right, I’m famished. Penny goes and pokes around in Baz’s kitchen. She throws a few things in a pot. She throws a few more things in a different pot. After a little while, she presents me with a bowl of vegetable soup, and I suspect she’s magicked it, because I feel stronger after I’ve eaten it.

She puts the contents of the second pot into a bowl, covers it, and sticks it in her bag. “For later,” she says.

When we’ve both finished eating, we sit in silence for a moment, and then I say, “I’m going to the beach. I have to stop him.”

She looks up at me like she wants to tell me not to go. But she doesn’t. She says, “I’ll go with you. But let’s put Baz up on the bed first. We can at least make him comfortable.”

We lift him carefully, trying not to unravel any of the bandages we applied. I cover him with his blankets. He looks peaceful—I could almost believe that he’s _only_ sleeping. I kiss his forehead, probably for the last time, and I think to myself, _I’m going to stop Davy for you_.

Then we go.

-

Penny knows where the creatures have set up their colony. It’s in an inlet, sheltered by rocks, not visible from town. It takes us the better part of an hour to walk there from Baz’s house. I’ve wasted a few hours by now, going to get Penny and trying to save Baz. And I’m too late to save the creatures, if I’d had any last hope of doing so. When we get to the inlet, the shore is littered with bodies. He’s already unleashed his poison here, clearly. Again he’s showing his disregard for his own subjects. Anyone else who was close by would’ve been killed too.

I was expecting a battle, endless and unwinnable. The silence and stillness here is eerie in comparison. I’m frozen, out of ideas, just standing there and looking at the carnage.

And then I see him—he’s sitting among the bodies, staring out at the sea. “What is he doing?” Penny whispers. And I have no idea.

We venture closer. He hears us coming and turns around. He smiles at me. “Simon,” he says. “I hoped you’d come. I hoped you would join me…”

There’s something about seeing him in the midst of all the bodies of these people he ruined that finally makes me realize how deranged he really is. I can’t reason with him, and I don’t know what else to do.

“Have you come around to my plan?” he says with a smile. “I’ll solve this puzzle yet, don’t you worry. I can give you everything, and I intend to.” He recognizes Penny and says, “Miss Bunce, lovely to see you again. Has Simon told you about our plans? I’m sure we can find a place for you at the castle. A magician with your power could be useful to us.”

“I would be grateful for any opportunity to be useful to Your Majesty.” She sounds sweet and timid—nothing like herself. “If I may venture to say so—”

He nods, waving her on.

“—Your Majesty looks fatigued after battling these creatures.”

“It wasn’t much of a battle,” he says, and he is tired, it’s clear.

“I’ve just made a soup to help fortify Simon—as you know, he’s also fought off some of the creatures today. Perhaps Your Majesty would like some?”

“That’s very thoughtful, Miss Bunce.” He waves her forward. She takes the bowl of soup out of her bag and hands it to him, along with a spoon.

It’s not until he’s about to take a bite that I remember the poisonous mushrooms and realize what she’s done. “No!” I say, but I’m too late. He’s already eaten them. In a few seconds, he slumps over onto the sand, and the bowl slips out of his hands.

I drop to my knees. I know it’s stupid to mourn someone who’s done so much evil, but he’s still the person who took care of me. He’s still my father.

He _was_ my father.

Penny kneels beside me and puts a hand on my shoulder. “He’s not dead,” she says. “The mushrooms aren’t that powerful, but I didn’t know what else to do. He’ll sleep for a few days. I hoped that would be enough time for you to secure the kingdom and your succession.”

I look at her, shocked. “When did you come up with that plan?”

“At Baz’s,” she says.

“You mean, you think I should take the throne? Penny, I can’t be King. I don’t know a thing about ruling.” The mere thought is terrifying.

“Even if you were completely incompetent, you’d still be better than him,” she says, nodding to Davy’s body in the sand. “You won’t hurt anyone. But you won’t be alone—I’ll help you however I can. We’ll assemble a council for you. People who really know what they’re doing.”

I just nod. I’ve gone completely numb.

So Penny takes charge. She magicks away some of the mess on the beach. She magicks Davy’s body so that even if he wakes up, he won’t be able to move. Then she takes me into town. We go Penny’s mother. It turns out that she works in the Watford government and has opposed Davy for years. She’s only just come back from a diplomatic trip to one of the other realms, and she barely knows anything about the creatures, so we fill her in on everything that’s happened. She springs into action, contacting other members of the government and issuing a decree announcing the arrest of King David. They take him, still asleep, to the castle dungeons. Then she makes another announcement: the return of the Lost Prince of Watford and his ascension to the throne. Soon, bells are ringing out all over the city, and people are taking to the streets to celebrate. I watch from out Penny’s windows. I never knew the king was so unpopular.

Penny and her mother leave me alone for a while, and it occurs to me that I may not be alone again for a long time, and there’s something I need to do. I sneak out of the house and go to the forest one last time.

-

Baz is just where we left him, on his bed, looking beautiful despite his pallor.

As I walked to his house, I tried to think what he would want me to do. If there’s no cure for this, would he rather die than become a monster?

As soon as I see him, I realize it doesn’t matter. I couldn’t kill him in a million years. I’ll keep looking for a cure until he turns. If I can’t save him, Penny or someone else will have to be the one to end things. I can’t.

I stand in the doorway of his house, and I think about all the times I wished I could leave this place, just because I was bored. Now I want nothing more than to stay. I don’t really want to be King. I don’t want to live in the castle. I don’t want to make decisions. I want the life I had here, simple and quiet, with Baz always by my side.

I walk over and kneel by his bed, and I think about how I’ll probably never hear his voice again or see him smile again or feel his arms around me again. I miss him already—I miss his sarcasm, even when it was at my expense, and I miss his kindness and his magic and the warmth of his mouth on mine.

That’s when I finally cry. I’ve lost my only family—the father I never knew about, who has caused so much destruction, and Baz, the person who made me feel like I was home. I slump over onto his chest and let myself go completely. The pain feels endless. Not even Ebb’s death hurt me this much. I can feel Baz’s shirt getting wet under my cheek, and I whisper, “Sorry.”

And then there’s a hand in my hair, and Baz says, “What for?”

I jump up and away from him. His eyes are open, and a little colour has come back into his cheeks. I’m speechless.

He tries to sit up but then groans, clutching at one of his wounds. “What on earth happened here, Snow?” he asks, looking himself over, pulling at his bandages.

And then I’m laughing, helpless and overwhelmed. He’s alive, and he’s not a monster. I’m still crying, and I’m laughing, and Baz is all right, and everything is going to be all right.

He’s looking at me with concern, which just makes me laugh more. _He’s_ concerned? He’s the one who practically just came back from the dead.

I collapse onto his bed, sitting beside him and taking his hand. “Baz,” I say. “You’re all right.”

“Quite so, Snow,” he says softly.

I bury my face in his neck. “You called me Simon before.”

“Well, then. Will you please tell me what’s going on, Simon?”

It takes me a few minutes to be able to speak coherently, but bit by bit, I manage to explain it to him. I tell him about going to the castle, about Davy’s revelations, about fighting the creatures, and finding Baz after he’d been attacked. I tell him about Davy killing the rest of the creatures and Penny poisoning him and him being arrested. “So I guess I’m the King of Watford now,” I conclude.

Now it’s Baz who can’t stop laughing. He grabs me around the waist and falls into my shoulder and says, “That’s quite a story, Your Majesty.”

“Don’t even start,” I say. I’m not letting him call me that. Then I say, “I don’t understand how you’re all right.” Because I really don’t. I’m so happy it scares me, but— “I don’t know how this is possible.”

Baz plucks at his still-wet shirt and says, “Maybe your tears cured me.”

I’m actually still a little teary, but I smile and say, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Nothing about those creatures makes sense,” he says. “Maybe your love cured me.”

“It doesn’t actually matter,” I say. It doesn’t matter because he’s going to be fine, and I’m never letting go of him.

I think about the ball and everything he’s said about his family, and I think about how kings usually marry royalty from other realms to form alliances with them, and I think that nobility is _practically_ royalty, and I decide right then that I’m going to ask Baz to marry me. It’s a lot less terrifying to think of being king if he’s by my side.

“So what are you going to do next, Your Majesty?” Baz asks me, and he sounds like he’s hoping I’ll say, _kiss you for hours,_ so I do.


End file.
